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A Success Story in Hilton Head

In this episode of the Green Industry Perspectives Podcast, Ty Deemer welcomes Nick Welliver to the show. Nick is the Owner & Operator of Hilton Head Landscapes. He shares the role that communication has played in HHL’s success, how software has influenced their success, and how he has identified his target customer.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why Nick decided to implement a software solution within his business.
  • How they got their close ratio to skyrocket.
  • The importance of not overcommitting.
  • Knowing when to say yes and how to say no.
  • That you need to spend time figuring out insurance and taxes.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Ty Deemer:

You are listening to The Green Industry Perspectives podcast, presented by SingleOps, a podcast created for green industry professionals looking for best practices, tactics, and tips on running their tree care or landscape business. 

All right, everyone. Welcome back to Green Industry Perspectives. I’m your host, Ty Deemer. I’m the marketing manager here at SingleOps. And today we have the great chance to talk to Nick Welliver from Hilton Head Landscape Company. Nick is the owner/operator of Hilton Head Landscapes and today we’re really excited to have him on the show. Nick, welcome.

Nick Welliver:

Hey, thank you. Glad to be here. Appreciate it.

Ty Deemer:

For sure, Nick. So we start off every episode with the same question to avoid fluff and provide immediate value to our audience. And that question is basically what are the top three things, common threads that have made c Head Landscape a successful business over the years?

Nick Welliver:

Well, I think we need to start with communication is number one. That’s something that we instruct all of our employees, management team, all that communication. Quite often, we can’t resolve an issues but as long as you communicate that to the client, it goes a long way. I hear a lot of feedback from our clients of some of our competitors that just don’t return phone calls or requests for proposals, don’t respond in a timely manner, things like that. So communication is number one. And then customer service and consistency. That’s something that’s kept us going for a while. Obviously, we’re in a service business. It’s not a product business. So how our clients feel after they interact with us, that’s ultimately what’s most important is they can feel that they have confidence in us and then obviously consistency. Just stick with it. Our clients, we add value by having very low turnover ratios of some of the same employees. We run very strict schedules so the consistency part is added value to our clients as well.

Ty Deemer:

Awesome. Yeah, and we’ll probably dive into a lot of those later on in the show. But before we get into more of our conversation, I’d love for you to just provide your background. How did you get involved with Hilton Head? How did you get involved in the landscape business? And kind of tell me about your journey to date.

Nick Welliver:

Yeah. Actually I kind of grew up a landscaper. I think I was destined to be a landscaper. My mother is a landscape architect and she had a very long career in landscaping. I actually was not planning on getting into landscaping. I went to school for marketing and business administration. And I was thinking about going into marketing but didn’t want to live in a big city. I started my landscaping career in Washington, D.C. with a company there doing hardscaping. And at the time, my mother owned a business down here in Hilton Head. She bought out a branch of TruGreen at the time. And started that up and just had—she struggled finding management to try and help. So I kind of moved down here and helped her build that business. Brought my older brother in as well. And we helped build that business and we actually sold it to Brickman Group—I’m not sure if I should be mentioning names or not—in 2006 or so. And I was planning on sticking on there for a while and I guess things didn’t really shake out. And most of my expertise was in the construction division and sales and installation and they were more of a maintenance focused corporation. So I decided to leave there and then just started up a company while I was in school for business, just doing it on the weekends with a friend of mine, borrowing equipment to get going. And bought our first mower, bought our first vehicle, trailer and then just we grew it from there. It started taking off pretty quickly honestly. We did about 100% growth our first seven years in business year-over-year. So it kind of showed me that maybe I’m going to stick with this landscape as opposed to marketing. And that’s actually, I think it’s a great career. It allows you get outsides sometimes. You’re not just stuck in an office all the time. You get to interact with clients. You get to interact with the employees. It’s very rewarding for sure. And I started Hilton Head Landscapes in 2009 and we’ve been growing every since and continuing to try and take some market share around here. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, yeah. And if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Right? I understand you standing there, just so the audience has an idea about Hilton Head, what type of services do you all offer? And then around how big is the business today since you’ve been growing it? 

Nick Welliver:

We’re primarily a commercial business. We do do some residential. But we are a full service landscape company. So commercial maintenance, there’s a couple of plantation or neighborhoods around here that we have contracts on. We did a lot of roadside municipality work for the town of Hilton Head for many years. We do a lot of maintenance there. And as well as construction. This area is really booming. There’s an area called Palmetto Bluff that there are hundreds of homes going up that are all in the million dollar price range. A lot of people are moving to this area I guess. We’ve found a nice niche in the high-end installation projects and that’s where the residential maintenance comes from. There’s a lot of small residential companies and we try not to compete on that level. And I’m trying to limit the amount in that I guess area of the business. But we do take on referrals. Of course, if we do an installation, we will take on the maintenance as well. We run two residential maintenance crews, six commercial maintenance crews and five construction enhancement type crews. Currently, we have about 50 employees and on track for just over $3 million in revenue this year. But we’ve signed a couple of big contracts recently so I would love to see $4 million possibly. That’s definitely not out of the question. We have full service. We do installation of irrigation systems. We do turf management, lawn care, installation of hardscaping as well. We’ve just recently in the past two years or so gotten a lot busier in the hardscape division I guess. Driveways, tabby concrete, all that kind of stuff, pavers, of course, outdoor kitchens. So that’s been exciting. I enjoy that part of it. But yeah, full service, we provide it all.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for going into all that detail. So we have a wide range of topics you and I are going to talk about. But one of them is definitely software adoption. Just because of our relationship with you and your team, we know that you just recently transitioned to using software. So I want to spend and talk about software in a few topics with you because for one, I know that I lot of what software does is allow you to do what you do in terms of those top three common threads that you mentioned. A lot of like client communication, customer service can be accomplished through software. But before we dive really into that side of things because I’d love to connect those two dots, I’d love to hear you talk about why did you view that your team needed a software and then what did that search process look like for you and your team?

Nick Welliver:

So it ended up being a pretty lengthy process. I’d say that I started looking into software in 2018 or so, a couple of years ago. And I was just so overwhelmed, busy as we were growing. I was trying to find management help the best I can, promoting from within as fast as I could. And we just couldn’t seem to keep up with the demand that we were looking for from our clients. So I just realized that in order for us to grow any further, I needed to somehow get the business to more of an autonomous business, to simplify the processes that we have so that we’re not spending as much time on each individual contact point with the clients, that sort of thing. So I looked into a couple of different softwares and decided on the one we have now. But it has been a huge help. I’ve been pushing it and recommending it to all of my friends and family members that even work in other industries, HVAC and elevator businesses and all that kind of stuff. We’ve only been into the software for about seven or eight months now but it has been a huge benefit. I’ve immediately seen it. I used to spend all my nights here in the office till eight or nine o’clock at night writing the proposals. I wanted to quality control, make sure that our pricing was consistent across the board. So I actually personally wrote every proposal in just a QuickBooks software basically. Our management team would go out and meet with the clients and write up an actual piece of paper of what they’re looking for and submit that to me. And I just found myself spending three, four hours every day just writing the proposals and trying to get the emails to the clients, that sort of thing. And it just became too much. So the software, the communication part and with my management team now with this software, we have everything plugged in. They can write something up. I can spend five minutes and approve it. It can go out the door. The email process, the templates that are set up for it, it makes it so much easier as well as for follow-up. It’s just a couple of clicks of buttons as opposed to in the past, we were on markerboards and notepads and trying to have a list of to-do things that never seemed to end. You just seemed to always be adding to the list as opposed to taking things off. But the software has helped huge for tracking the proposals, tracking the progress. It’s really allowed us to grow. So I have a positive outlook for 2021. Over the past couple of years, we’ve put out about 400 proposals or so for a year and we’re 230 proposals already in February of this year. 

Ty Deemer:

Wow.

Nick Welliver:

So we’re definitely getting them out a lot more efficiently and we’re also closing them because they look much more professional and it’s just much more efficient.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. I love that you were able to touch on the efficiency side of things because it definitely makes sense. Right? it’s all in one system. You don’t have to go back to the office after the day of talking to the client. Like it’s all there all the time. So there’s definitely the time-saving element of it. But I’d love for you to dive a little bit deeper on how it’s actually helped close more business. Obviously, you just said that you’ve been able to produce by volume more proposals. But how are you seeing like customers react to a digital proposal? And are you finding that just the fact that maybe it’s easier for them accept those has added to the benefit? What’s all gone into why you view your close ratio jumping like that?

Nick Welliver:

I think the ease of it is definitely one of the factors. The format of it, the professionalism of it, I think that’s one of the huge things. And also timing. It’s allowed us to get proposals out much quicker than before going through our process where it would sit in the box on my desk for two days sometimes before I could even write it up. So our clients would sometimes wait a week, possibly two weeks from point of contact with the management on site to actually to receiving the proposal. And now we’re able to get it to them within that day if we need to. So that’s been a huge benefit. We’re able to, while we’re still fresh in our client’s mind, get the proposal and get the number to them so that they can ask questions and that it doesn’t bring up a whole another process of meeting again and going through all that. Also, the format of it. The ability to add pictures. Landscaping is a very visual business and most of our clients don’t really know. When we start speaking plant material names, botanical names, it’s like Greek to most of them. They can’t envision what our ideas are. So being able to attach pictures of every plant material that we’re suggesting into the picture, be able to map it, show them where it is. It’s much clearer now. So it’s a little bit easier for people to gain that trust and approve it quicker as to opposed to in the past. They were really just going off of a verbal trust that we knew what we were doing. But now we can just show them. And that’s helped big time. And again, communication, that’s what’s key, is that we can follow up, they can accept, they can track it as well. It goes a long way and I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from some of our long-time clients that they were used to our QuickBooks proposals for seven years and now they’re seeing this transition and they’re impressed. They’re saying it’s a very professional proposal. It’s a lot easier for them to get through and they can leave options on there. That’s something that we can upsell much easier with a software system than with a piece of paper basically. If we have some ideas, we just throw them in there as recommended and through the portal, the client can click on it and we can go ahead and get it on the schedule. It really improves our timing for actually getting the work done as well. The proposal can get to the client quicker but as soon as it’s approved, it prompts to go to our construction division to say this is ready to get on to a calendar and get it on the schedule. It’s been helpful and also, with me out in the field, if I’m speaking to a client, I can just pull it up and say, hey, as of, I met a client this morning and we’re actually six or seven weeks out on our enhancement right now. But to be able to tell them that face-to-face as opposed to I need to get to the office and then respond to you and start a whole other chain of communication.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. I think that’s so cool too considering what you were talking about earlier in the episode about how a priority for you and your business is communication with the client. And when you’re able to just put all of that in front of the client on the front end, it just sets your team up for success. Like if a proposal clearly lays out what they can expect and then you’re able to deliver on that service, like there’s not a much better experience for the end customer than that. Right?

Nick Welliver:

Absolutely. We want to try and eliminate any surprises that we can for a client. Nobody likes to hear something’s going to cost more after it’s already done. So we can spell everything out. It’s very clear and line item, check them off as they’re being completed. So I think the customer service experience is definitely enhanced using this software.

Ty Deemer:

Oh, absolutely. And I love what you touched on too about sometimes the terminology you use is like Greek to them. And it doesn’t matter if you’re landscape space or the tree care space, like the terminology that the professional will use doesn’t necessarily make sense. I was talking to a guy who’s in the tree care space and he was talking about crowing a tree with a customer. And they just had a completely different idea of that meant than like what he meant. And like they showed up really proud of their work, did a great job. But then the customer’s like, whoa, what the hell is this? Like this isn’t what I—then if you’re able to provide those pictures and like really spell it out for them, you’re just saving headaches for both parties involved. 

Nick Welliver:

Exactly. And as busy as we are, as much as communication as there is for these projects, we want to try and minimize the number of phone calls that we have to field and the number of emails that we have to field because we want to get back to them immediately every time. So in the software, if the proposal can answer those questions before they even get raised, that helps us allocate our time towards other projects and moving forward and growing. It’s definitely helped.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. So one thing I want to touch on and what we hear a lot of times with the green industry is implementing software is a big decision. You took the time to think through it, have a process of evaluating. But one of the big roadblocks to software is often just timing of when it makes sense to implement based on your season. And you implemented probably during a time period where y’all weren’t skipping a beat. Y’all were still very busy. What was it like for you to implement a software during your busy season while you were growing at a rapid rate? And how would you encourage other owners and operators of these businesses to say, hey, maybe you just need to take the plunge even if it’s going to make for a hectic couple of months?

Nick Welliver:

All right. I’m glad you brought that up, Ty. That’s great that you touched on that. I was going to mention that the reason why it was a two-year process is that entire year, I just kind of sat on the fence about it because I was so worried, I was so overwhelmed and so busy that I was trying to think of how am I going fit time in to go through training of this software? And do I want to add another complication to my daily what’s going on? And what I can say to anybody that’s listening to this podcast, dive right in as soon as you can. There’s really never going to be a perfect time that slows down and you want to get into the software. Once we just made the decision of we’re just going to go with it, I know that we’re busy, but we’re going to make time to go through this implementation. And it really didn’t take that much time, an hour a week or so. Really wasn’t too bad. But we learned a lot quickly. And within a couple of weeks, we were hitting the ground running and within a couple of months, I’m blown away with the value that this software has added to the business and really me being able to sleep at night. I’m able to check on things. It’s all in there. I can look at it and make sure that everything, everybody’s in the place they need to be and not be stressing and keeping everything in my head all the time. Allow the software to track some of that information. But it was a process at first. Once we actually made the decision, it didn’t take that long at all and it was a pretty painless process. It was just I think I procrastinated for way too long on it, thinking that it was going to be arduous but it really wasn’t. So I highly recommend to anybody, if you’re considering a software, go for it. What’s the saying? If you want to something done, the best way is to get started.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. For sure.

Nick Welliver:

Get started. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. So I don’t want to focus on software for our entire conversation. But it’s obvious that you’ve gotten value out of the product in making that decision. I’d love to hear your perspective on how has your team responded to a software change kind of like across the board? It’s kind of obvious based on our conversation, you’re salespeople probably love it because they’re selling a ton of business. But what about your office team? And what about maybe some of your crews? Have they had value of using a software as well?

Nick Welliver:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s kind of normal that most people are resistant to that change at first when they hear about the software. When I first started mentioning at our weekly crew meetings and management meetings that we’re considering a software, people are kind of scared of it. They’re thinking it’s going to be another major task they have to deal with. But after you get used to it, it really just simplifies the day and makes it a lot better for everybody. All the data’s there. Everybody gets to work off of the same information as opposed to trying to match everything up to together. So in the office, yeah, it’s been a huge help. We still do use a QuickBooks systems. But in the past as well as the construction enhancement proposals, because quite often on a project things change while you’re there. You may need to add a zone of irrigation or you may need to add a customer request for some more trees or sod or that sort of things. So we just had write-ups and I was doing the final invoicing as well. So it took us sometimes a week or two for me to get an invoice out for work that we’d already completed. So our cashflow was being hurt before as well. It’s crazily improved our cashflow. And I can say that over the past year or so, I’ve also hired a couple of managers that I want to give credit to. They have been great. I hired an operations manager, Richard, and a controller, Michael. And of course, I still have my office manager, Joe, I’m sorry, construction manager, Joe. We finally have this team together and we are all moving in the right direction and banging on all cylinders as they say. The software’s been a huge help as all of us have access to the same information. So it’s definitely more efficient for all of us.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, for sure. That’s great to hear. And it’s cool to see that there’s just buy-in from the team because that is important. And I do want to touch on your team. You mentioned how important a consistent team is because your clients are able to recognize faces and it isn’t a new guy every now and then. You’re able to build a solid team foundation and I think employment in the green industry is something we hear about all the time, whether it’s good management or good crew team members. It is a hard thing to find great employees and then retain them. And it sounds like you’ve got some good ones. So what are some of the ways as the owner of Hilton Head that you’ve really tried to make sure like, hey, we’re going to hold onto the good ones that we have? 

Nick Welliver:

Absolutely. I mean it’s providing value for them. Our culture is very important to me. If anything, I probably erred in allowing too much culture, a little bit too much of a lax atmosphere. I understand that. But that’s really to provide benefit for our employees. We want to keep the good guys we have. As far as the crew guys, I have guys that I actually started on an irrigation crew with myself when I was in high school. And since then, I’ve brought through multiple different companies. I have guys that I’ve worked with for 15-20 years that have stuck with it. We treat everybody right. We put together incentive programs. We have crews of month that we give out gift cards if necessary. We throw little parties for the guys. There’s a lot of different things. But ultimately, it’s communication with them as well and respect for everybody and building the bench. And that’s really what we’re going to focus on in 2021. I’m seeing, forecasting substantial growth. So we really need to make sure we build our bench. We need the right people in here which I feel that we have. Absolutely. Management has been tough over the past couple of years. We’ve gone through a couple of mangers I guess. I hate to say it that way. But a couple of them didn’t work out I guess. But I do feel confident now in our team that we have now that it’s a good foundation. And then we’re going to build on that. But it really comes down to the culture. We’re a pretty small business and honestly, I want to stay that. I could see us—I try to not overcommit. That’s our number one thing right now is that the growth potential is definitely there and I’ve witnessed some of my competitors grow very rapidly but then things start to get out of control and it’s hard to make sure you have your quality, consistence, communication falls through. And I hear the same gripes from our clients about some of our competitors I guess. So trying not to overcommit. I want to make sure that when we take something on, we have the right personnel for that project. So slow growth is the idea. That’s what I’m going for I guess. We’re not taking on every project that’s available. We’re not bidding on every project that’s out there. We’re trying to focus on our sectors basically. But yeah, personnel, it’s absolutely the most important I think because that’s where the interaction comes from, that’s where the customer service comes from. Our personnel is what gives our clients the feeling of, positive feeling about their landscaper. 

Ty Deemer:

Absolutely. And that’s why I liked following up with that question. Because you can have the best software in the world that does everything for your business. It’s never going to replace the people that deliver on the services. Like it’s just true. So software is great but until you have great people to deliver the services and to build the personal connection with the client, you’re never going to get anywhere. 

Nick Welliver:

Yeah, absolutely. That is 100% true. I’ve been lucky enough to build a good team here over the years. I’ve worked a number of different companies. And treat everybody like you’d like to be treated yourself. And I think we do. We pay higher an industry average as well. I think these guys deserve it for sure. We do higher quality work than some of our competitors so that warrants an increased fee. But we pass it on to our employees as well and hopefully that’s going to continue to help us grow with quality, hard-working employees that really care about what they’re doing. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, for sure. And I kind of want to move the conversation this direction because you’ve touched on it a few times. It really does sound like your market is pretty competitive and you’re starting to have to make kind of strategic decisions of like hey, what are we going to go after? What is our sector? Talk to me through what that process has looked like for you and like maybe share why you’ve landed where you’re at. 

Nick Welliver:

A lot of it has to do with the market itself and how that evolves. I’ve been involved in almost every type of landscaping over the years. My past companies, we did a lot of military-based work around here when those were growing over in Beaufort area. There was a lot of track housing projects we did in 2006, 2008 before the whole recession thing. So I’ve done all that. I’ve done the municipality work. When I first started Hilton Head Landscapes we, were doing a lot of municipality roadside work for the town of Hilton Head. And that definitely got our name out there and that proved to help build the business. But it was kind of a lesson for me that the juice is not always worth the squeeze I guess, that there are certain contracts that are very, very consuming mentally and financially and sometimes I felt that I had some employees that are really overqualified for what we were doing for basic municipality work I guess. And we started doing some of the higher end residential installations which is really where I thrive. I enjoy that you get to be creative, to get to be on site and we’ve gotten just the response from our clients that there’s also much more profit margin in a high-end residential installation as opposed to a competitive bid government contract I guess. So I’ve shifted the business over the past couple years to shift more towards the hardscape and high-end installation. But then we also have the high-end commercial maintenance division as well. So the plantation and neighborhood management, common areas like that. It’s I guess similar to municipality work but higher detail. Some of our guys, they take such pride in their work that when I was on some of those budget strap projects, let me say that it was difficult to be proud of the work when you just had to rush through things because you were so strapped by the numbers on it. It just didn’t make it an enjoyable experience for the employees or for myself. So being able to shift the business towards installation and commercial maintenance that has a little higher detail, the guys are proud of their work and they enjoy it. And that’s what helps build the culture here as well, that we can be proud of everything we do and know when we walk away from it, we know that’s a Hilton Heads Landscapes project and that it stands out against other competitors I guess. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. And you mentioned earlier in the conversation that you’ve been able to start tracking your backlog and you have an accurate representation of like when the next available slot for a project will be. Has that helped you at all kind of figure out like your ideal customer? And have you been able to like say no to more people or like really kind of be a little bit more picky about which projects you want to take on? 

Nick Welliver:

Yeah, that’s a great question actually. That’s something that I feel like I’ve been kind of forced into by the market. And there’s a shortage of quality labor. Obviously, we try to bring in labor as best we can. We try to ask all our employees to bring people in. But there’s much more demand than the availability of the labor. So we absolutely are getting pushed out and it’s kind of forced us to say that, hey, we’re six seven weeks out. Yes, we’re hiring right now but we won’t have people in in time to get to this. And one of the number one things I think has helped me in business, one of my professors taught to me is that the key is knowing when to say yes and how to say no. That right there, you’re going to have to say no at times. As long as you say it eloquently and it’s not insulting, then you can still have a positive reputation I guess. And that’s been one of the difficult things for me to say no to clients that we’re too busy. It’s hard to structure that sentence without insulting somebody. Like we’re working on bigger projects than what’s going on right now. That’s not something you ever want to say to a client. I get that. The software has helped to be able to have it’s kind of black and white to say that our demand is that we’re booked out for seven weeks. We’ll still be happy to do the project but it’s going to be a little while and we fully understand if you need it done sooner than that. We can recommend one of our competitors for you that may have the availability. And it’s no sweat off our back. We recommend quite a few companies. Like I said before, we don’t do a lot of residential maintenance. We have kind of a minimum on the residential managed division. So I recommend a couple of my ex-employees that started their own business. I recommend them for those sites. So the how you say no I guess that is not necessarily a project for us is definitely difficult. But recently, we’ve been kind of forced to become eloquent about that and knowing which projects we do want to take on. We’re kind of forced to be selective at this point of what we want to be involved in. And ultimately as a business owner, I think it comes down to where our most profitable sectors. We want to look at those first obviously. I don’t know if it’s the best business but I also like to what do we enjoy working on. What helps the culture of this business move forward? What do my employees love working on? There’s some guys that love working on hardscaping. There’s some guys that love working on irrigation. To be able to provide those and keeping everybody happy is not easy but that’s part of the task. 

Ty Deemer:

It’s definitely an art for sure. And what you touched on about being pretty eloquent with how you tell people no is a huge important deal. But part of it can be resolved by having those two to three competitors in your wheelhouse and say, hey, like if I can’t do it, I’ll at least recommend someone to you so I’m just not leaving you kind of hanging out to dry if I was your only company. So I love that y’all are doing that. And what you touched on too like about the work that you want to prioritize, I love the two buckets you talked about. Because some consultants in the space will say, hey, only do what you’re most profitable at. But it all depends on what type of business you want to run. Like if profit’s your main goal, then yeah, sure. Bid the work that you want to be profitable on. But if part of your goal is to like actually enjoy what you’re doing and you have team members that do it, then like prioritize that because there’s still money in it. 

Nick Welliver:

Yeah, exactly. And that’s why, how you said, I’ve had consultants come in at our last company, that sort of thing. And yeah, I get that. I mean I have a degree in business administration. They are profit driven. It’s all down to the numbers. But once I started Hilton Head Landscape, I went through the whole corporate training thing. I went through that atmosphere and I didn’t enjoy that atmosphere honestly. And that’s just me. Some people thrive in those kinds of atmospheres. But I like being personable with the clients and being creative and that sort of thing and not being strapped by spreadsheets essentially. So I didn’t want to mention is like yeah, a consultant might not agree with me that we want to be in sectors that we do enjoy working on even if it’s a little bit less profitable. But that’s something that helps, it goes towards the culture of the business. And once I started this company, I realized that I should enjoy coming into work because it’s my decision. if I don’t enjoy coming to work, then what am I doing wrong? I’m the only one that can make the change. So I want that same thing for all of our management team, all of our employees. I don’t want them to dread coming into work. I want them to enjoy their day. So that’s part of it. So there’s times that I’ll maybe lower price on hardscaping things because my employees get. So much fulfillment out of doing that project. I don’t mind making a little bit less profit on it if it helps build the team, it helps bring new talent in and helps expose us to possibly new clients as well. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. That’s really cool. 

Nick Welliver:

More than just money. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. Well, and you hit it right on the head. Like you’ve got to be the one that sets the tone there. And if you know that’s how you feel, of course, your employees are probably going to feel the same way. So that’s really cool that y’all are prioritizing that. My next kind of question for you, obviously, we’re going into a new year. It sounds like that 2021 has kind of gotten started off big for y’all with a few big projects, lots of proposals going out. As you were going into this year, what were some of your biggest goals for Hilton Head? Did you have like team growth goals, business development goals, maybe a personal goal or two? Talk to me about like as you’re thinking about this year, what are some of the landmarks you’re trying to achieve as a business? 

Nick Welliver:

I appreciate you asking that for sure. For 2021, this software came about in 2020 and it’s really just kind of motivated me to push us in the right direction. But our main thing is I can see us having the foundation now to allow some of that growth that I’ve kind of been curbing for a couple of years. So building the team is number one for this year, is that we’re going through lots of interviews this year. We want to build our team up and be prepared for some of that growth. It’s taken us a little while but we’re finally there to where I have confidence in the team without me needing to be involved. And that was part of it as well is some personal goals is that I finally want some time that I’m not working 70 hours a week, 80 hours a week. I want to work a normal work schedule and I’m starting to get there. And it feels good. I should be able to. But for many years, the past 10 years, the business has been way too dependent on me specifically. It becomes so much pressure. I’m sure there’s some people out there listening to this that understand that the pressure, if it’s all on you and you don’t have the right people in the right places to support you, it can become too much and it becomes not fun anymore. So that was one of the things that I made a conscious decision three four years ago to start building in that direction and trying to get the business to be somewhat autonomous to where if I do want to take a week off for vacation, which I don’t do very often, if I do, I don’t have to worry or be on the phone the whole time during that vacation. I have people in place that can run the show while I’m gone if necessary. We’re finally there. This software has been a huge leap in allowing that to happen because it allows me to check on things still quickly and efficiently without having to be directly involved in all the decision making. I can now delegate some decision making to our team leaders and that’s been a huge help. I’m excited for that. And for many years, I’ve been hesitant to take on growth because the business was so dependent on me and I didn’t feel that I had the time to take on that growth. So now that I feel that we have a good foundation, I have a very positive outlook that we can easily handle some of that growth that’s right here. I mean as soon as we start, we’ve been taking orders for a long—there’s difference between taking orders and selling. As soon as we start selling, obviously which is what this software has helped us do is we’re not pushing sales. We’re not just answering the phone and taking orders. So I expect substantial growth this year and the software’s been a huge part of that. 

Ty Deemer:

That’s really cool, Nick. Yeah, exciting to hear. And it’s awesome that everything like works together. It’s not like you as a business owner, you’re not separating your personal life from your work. They kind of naturally just become so intertwined. But like there are successes on both sides of it. You’re growing but you’re also recognizing, hey, I’m able to kind of take a step back a little bit here and recognize that I’ve built out a team to date and a system to date that can help support it and not feel like it’s all on me. And that’s definitely something to be celebrated for sure. 

Nick Welliver:

Yeah. It’s something that’s been well needed. I’ve pushed and pushed for quite a while and yes, it’s absolutely built a business to what it is today. But I think we have lots more potential and really just stressful keeping people alive. You have to balance work life and personal life and part of that is learning how to say no to certain clients that we can’t take that on at this time, that sort of thing. But definitely need some time with my wife and family. I think that’ll help. I’ve already been dialing back some hours, not spending as much time at night on proposals. And now I can just scroll through in about an hour instead of four hours and approve some that have already been written. So it’s definitely been a huge help. And it’s been a two-fold thing. More profitable, more projects and more time for personal life as well. So it’s helped in both directions. For many years, it was if we want to grow, it’s going to require a lot more time. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, that’s all awesome. So as we’re getting more towards the back part of the show, I have a few more questions for you and some of them are a little bit reflective just to think back on the journey to date. Obviously, you’re kind of seeing a lot of hard work pay off right now, specifically with Hilton Head. So if you could go back and kind of talk to yourself at the beginning of this journey, what’s like one piece of advice that you would give yourself when you started Hilton Head that you know now? 

Nick Welliver:

Don’t overcommit. Yeah, that’s one thing. And I will mention this that for people that are listening with a small business, I mean I went to school and got a business degree. It did very much surprise me that they don’t teach you much about taxes in accounting and insurance for that matter. So when we first started out, that stuff was so confusing to me. I obviously fully understand all that stuff now. But that’s something that I would tell my younger self. Hey, go spend some time studying how that stuff works even if it wasn’t in my curriculum through school. It’s definitely something that’s necessary for success. The overcommit, that’s something that I have done over the years is that I’ve said yes, we can absolutely do that and then I found myself working until 11, 12 o’clock at night trying to write proposals because I committed to having it to them by a certain date and time gets occupied and just work balance for sure. I think in the landscape industry, there’s plenty of work to go around. I know in this market for sure. I’ve also heard from other markets that it’s very busy. So the work is there. So just value your services and you don’t have to get every job. That’s okay. That’s not a problem. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. And what you touched on there with the numbers side of things and taxes, financial stuff, accounting, that’s something that we hear all the time is overwhelming for a lot of businesses. Like obviously, you just have to know those sort of things to be on top of your numbers. How did you like become more comfortable with those numbers when you were like diving into it? 

Nick Welliver:

I had some experience of the reviewing the P&L’s and that sort of thing through the other companies before I started Hilton Head Landscapes. So ultimately, a software, if you don’t have some sort of software—we started with just a basic QuickBooks and that was helpful for sure. That helped me learn profitabilities, that sort of thing, track the labor all of that. But then when it came down to this other software, the sales type software, that’s been huge for the growth. But tracking everything, every hour, I know that it sounds monotonous or boring. It’s absolutely essential to any businesses. Because if you don’t know what your numbers are, then you don’t have the data to make the decisions on which direction you want to go in the future. It’s something I’ve stuck to is tracking every man hour on every site and putting in the time and the effort to have the data. Even if it doesn’t seem valuable today, two, three years from now when you start pulling your P&L’s and start looking at hey, what did I do this year and how much labor was there compared to revenues, that sort of thing, that information really makes a lot easier to decide which direction to take the business in. It’s something that knowing those numbers is really what was the deciding factor for me to kind of get out of the municipalities landscape. So I looked at what it was and it was almost a breakeven. It was close to a million dollars a year but almost a breakeven. So it’s something that do I really want to go through all this effort to not have any profit come back at the end of the year? And it was much better to shift the business in a different direction, allocate our resources and machinery towards something that’s more profitable since we’re not planning on huge growth. We don’t want the huge growth and taking on everything because it just stretches people too thin. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. Making those educated decisions is huge and it can just drive, like especially if when you’re talking about like the work’s there but our resources can be strapped at times. You can just make educated decisions on where to allocate equipment, team members. And there’s a lot of peace of mind that’s involved with that as well I bet. 

Nick Welliver:

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s another saying. Expect what you inspect. So you can trust people but verify. And if you don’t have the data to do the verification, then you don’t really know where you stand. And it’s actually easy to go upside down on projects. Clients will request certain things and of course, you’re going to make everybody happy but we work on pretty tight profit margins in landscaping. In general, it’s pretty tight. So you could easily get into a project that’s under bid and still be bound to complete the project and people think that it’s not possible to lose money. You can definitely lose money in landscape if you overcommit to something or if you underbid something by too much. So knowing the exact numbers of my business specifically or your business specifically is key because every business operates a little bit different. I think we probably have a little bit higher operating costs than some of our competitors. That’s just the sector that we’re in and it’s the decisions that I’ve made to try to retain our top employees. And so that warrants that we need to charge somewhat incremental more than some of our competitors. But it’s all quality of work. At Hilton Landscapes, we’re competing on the quality, not the price as the idea. There’s plenty of landscapers that beat us on price and that’s also, that can be a great avenue for some people. I’m not talking that down or anything. But one of the things I learned in business school is don’t get stuck in the middle. Don’t offer the quality and the price as well. You got to kind of choose one direction to take it and focus on that direction. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, it certainly seems like y’all know your niche. Well, Nick we’ve had a great conversation so far. I’ve got one last question before we come to a close and I like to finish every episode with this question because it’s very, it’s kind of forward thinking and it’s also pretty simple. Nick, what comes next for you and what are you most excited about over the next couple months with your business? Right now, when you wake up in the morning, says like wow, like this is a great thing going on and I’m excited to see how it plays out? 

Nick Welliver:

I get excited about projects. And we just signed two huge projects, one residential install project that’s over half a million dollars. It’s the largest one that we’ve ever done. I think it’s the largest one on Hilton Head in many years. And I’m very excited about that. We went up against five other landscapers and we were awarded it. So I feel very good about it. I’m excited because I like installing and caring for interesting and amazing landscapes. And that’s what this is going to be. It’s a 20,000 square foot mansion home that it’ll really help us in the future to say that we would be a part of this project. That’s one of them. We have a couple others as well. There’s a couple of plantations that we’ve been communicating with. So I get up in the morning, I get excited about taking on new opportunities that we’ve been, some of these sales are three and five years in the making for some of the large neighborhood contracts I guess. They go up every three to five years. So we’ve been working on it for a while and I think this may be our year that we have everything in line to confidently take on some of those larger projects. And also, building our team. I feel really good about the team that we have right now. Like I mentioned before, we’re banging on all cylinders right now. We’re operating smoothly. I have much less stress than I had two years ago or so. I think we’re getting through this COVID thing. Hopefully this year, things should open back up. It didn’t affect us that much but we always adapt and overcome of course. But I think 2021, we’re looking up. 

Ty Deemer:

Awesome, Nick. Yeah, I love that. And I’m excited to hear about those projects that are coming to fruition. Man, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today. We’ve covered a ton of topics that I think is going to be really valuable to the audience. So thank you so much again for taking the time and joining. And I really look forward to seeing the continued success and growth that Hilton Head’s about to have over the next year. 

Nick Welliver:

Thank you, Ty. I really appreciate you for having me. I hope this provides some benefit for some others. And I’ll continue to listen in to the podcast. I really appreciate it. 

Ty Deemer:

Absolutely. Thanks again, Nick. Talk soon.

Conclusion:

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